The Virginia Department of Corrections (VADOC) operates the Appalachian Community Corrections Alternative Program (ACCAP). ACCAP is defined as an evidence-based alternative to prison for nonviolent offenders who have been convicted of a felony. ACCAP provides a structured, healing environment where participants can receive help designed to address criminal thinking, substance abuse disorders, educational and vocational needs. Participants in ACCAP are given the opportunity to

The number one goal for the Virginia Department of Corrections (VADOC) is longterm public safety. As in any other prison system, the VADOC is always looking to enhance its safety and security procedures to fulfill this goal. Looking at the visitation policies and procedures statewide, it was found that the common theme was contraband breaching the secured perimeter. Concerns statewide rose when inmate overdoses increased, prison infractions for contraband grew and the concern

Even before 9/11, many Muslim activists and community leaders were involved in dialogue with other ethnic, race or faith-based groups. It stemmed from a desire to be understood as media and Hollywood continued their negative stereotyping of Islam while hiding the political underpinnings to those conflicts. I got involved with many such groups, as I loved the promise of dialogue for our new multicultural world, having grown up on four continents myself. I had been enchanted wi

In March 2020, the governor of the Commonwealth of Virginia declared a state of emergency due to the Covid-19 coronavirus. Newly implemented contact and social distancing restrictions caused the District 20 random drug screening program, known as Color Code, to be suspended. Drug screenings, which are a necessary and impactful tool used most frequently during the term of supervision, were being administered only when they were Court ordered or when there was a public safety i

Dialogue has developed over a long intellectual and practical trajectory, reaching back to the ancient Greeks in Western society. Over this time, it has appeared in varying forms in many indigenous cultures around the world, where it is experienced not only as a means of communication but also as an intimate part of community and spiritual life. Over the past three decades, the practice of dialogue has emerged as a distinct field based on the integration of experience, resear

n early 2021, after having dealt with the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic for over 10 months, the Virginia Department of Corrections (VADOC) finally began receiving vaccines. Up until the availability of the vaccines, VADOC had experienced the loss of over 50 inmates due to the virus. In addition, the Department lost one of its most prominent leaders of more than 40 years, Warden Earl Barksdale. As a priority group, Virginia’s inmates had access to the vaccine early. In Janu

Alexandria Probation and Parole consists of 15 employees: eight Probation Officers, two Senior Probation Officers, one Chief, one Deputy Chief and three administrative staff. Through community partnerships and collaborative relationships, the District strives to build a healing environment for probationers and parolees, their families, and for the community at large. This office is fortunate to have a large team of seasoned officers with very little turnover. By completing th

From 2011 to 2016, the South Asia Champions Dialogue Process (SACDP) engaged dozens of officials, leaders and development organizations to create a series of innovative conversations that would catalyze several billion dollars of investment. Sponsored by the World Bank and the Department of International Development (DFID), this activity brought about honest exchanges among senior leaders and officials across South Asia in the management of Energy, Water, Climate, Ecosystem a

The development of the Corona pandemic in Sweden has led to an intense debate about elderly care and how it should be designed for the future. Today there is a great consensus among politicians that care for the elderly requires more resources, and employees need better employment conditions. Government-sponsored elderly care has come into focus now because about two-thirds of all deaths have occurred within that sector. There have been major shortcomings in the avail- abilit

How do I live a better life and how do I do a better job? Threshold Dialogue brought together people involved in the criminal justice system in the UK – high-repeat offenders, police officers, prison staff, local government officers and politicians, housing and employment staff and many others – to consider these questions. The common goal of all these participants was to improve resettlement of offenders and thereby reduce recidivism. This was achieved in Threshold Dialogue

In 1984 a new kind of Dialogue was conceived by David and Saral Bohm, Don and Anna Factor and Peter and Jenny Garrett with 40 other participants gathered for a weekend in the English Cotswold Hills. Further private weekend Dialogues in Israel and Europe established why Dialogue is necessary and continued a deepening participatory enquiry into proprioceptive awareness. An adaption of the approach was later popularised by Peter Senge in his book The Fifth Discipline, and became

It is the ninth of September, 2009: coordinators, trainers and dialogue facilitators from 36 cities are gathered at the Okura Hotel in Amsterdam for the national meeting of The Netherlands in Dialogue (NID). National ambassadors and partner organizations are present, and they express their wish to strengthen social cohesion in the Netherlands by organizing dialogue gatherings across all segments of society.

I am writing this article as a Trustee of Prison Dialogue, a UK-based not-for-profit charity which seeks to promote the use of Dialogue in the Criminal Justice System, and especially in prisons. My route to arriving in this position was somewhat roundabout, as I am neither a Criminal Justice professional nor a Dialogue Practitioner. I encountered the concept of Dialogue in the course of my career in the oil business with British Petroleum as part of some work we were doing to

I recall starting a new job when I was in my late 30s. I had been running my own business importing women’s fashion clothing into the UK and wholesaling it to upmarket independent women’s dress shops from a fancy display unit in the rag trade area, behind Oxford Street in London. Then the supply end in South Africa failed to deliver. As I was closing things down and letting the showroom, I thought how much I would enjoy working with property. An old friend was now running the

Medicine in the United States is generally fragmented as a profession, as are Academic Medical Centers as institutions. Academic Medical Centers (AMC) typically consist of a College of Medicine with its afliated University Hospital. The University Hospital often has a closed medical staff, meaning that only the faculty members of the medical school are able to care for patients in the hospital. Community physicians who are not faculty members are typically not allowed to mana

In April of 2020, a group of colleagues and I held a series of dialogues to try to make sense of the pandemic. As a result we set up a series of seven, 90-minute biweekly dialogues between April and July of 2020. Our intention was to make a genuine space for conversation—a dialogue that allowed people to uncover the meaning they were making of the situation, and to listen collectively for what was emerging in an unprecedented way. We did not seek to impose meaning on what we

The Virginia Department of Corrections (VADOC) is responsible for the care, security and well-being of over 30,000 inmates, 60,000 supervisees and 13,000 staff. Our mission is to help people do better. To accomplish this, each person within the VADOC is accountable to ensure that the organization works efficiently, effectively and continuously with minimal disruptions. Agency culture and environment are critical to achieving the agency’s mission. VADOC has adopted a Healing E

In 2018, the Chief of Housing and Program Managers (CHAPS) participated in a survey initiated by the Virginia Department of Corrections (VADOC) to look at a number of challenges the managers were facing. The survey revealed that operational and housing unit issues, inmate classification, along with managing and tracking learning teams for all staff members at their assigned facilities, required a large majority of their time. The large amount of time required for operational

My opportunity to work with Dialogue began in the 1990s. The German Unification process was a real challenge, especially for citizens of the former German Democratic Republic, or East Germany (GDR). Various East-West projects were developed and implemented to support this process, including dialogic approaches in which I was able to participate. In more recent years I had many opportunities to work with dialogue in the European Union. These included projects helping new membe

In this paper, we will describe a process of reflecting on facilitation that started in our workshop at the second The World Needs Dialogue! international conference organised by the Academy of Professional Dialogue in 2019. For this event, the papers are usually distributed to participants beforehand and, at the conference, dialogues are held on the topics of the papers. Our workshop proceeded in a reverse order. We invited participants to reflect on dialogue facilitation in